A recent article from the Wall Street Journal highlighted a trend arising in large businesses: CEOs get more out of AI tools than anyone else in the company.
Referencing a report from the AI consulting firm Section, which surveyed 5000 white-collar workers from companies with 1000 or more employees, it was found that senior executives see significant efficiency gains compared with everyone else in the company.
The research states over 40 percent of senior leaders claim AI saves them more than eight hours of work per week, while nearly 19 percent of executives say it saves them over 12 hours.
In comparison, two-thirds of non-executive workers say AI saves them two hours or less per week, and roughly 40 percent of workers say AI saves them no time at all. Surprisingly, 4 out of 10 employees said they would be fine with never using AI again.
While company leaders view AI as a driver of efficiency and profit, most employees view learning how to use the tools and integrating them into workflows as a source of workload increase rather than something that benefits their lives.
This difference sheds light on a possible issue underpinning AI initiatives – senior leaders have a more positive outlook on, and technical know-how of, AI tools compared to the rest of the workforce. But what are the factors leading to this phenomenon?
The Expendables
It makes sense why executives might feel more positively about AI-use than regular workers. Senior leaders might have a mandate from stakeholders to use AI to drive growth, and generally see the tool as a multiplier of capacity.
A part of the story reflects the different types of tasks executives do compared with other staff.
“Executives directly benefit from productivity gains,” says Jake Third, CEO at digital marketing agency Hallam. “They can reallocate time to higher-value activities.”
Company leaders are also more likely to have daily tasks that can easily be automated by AI, such as data synthesis, trend predictions or high-level decision making.
Workers, on the other hand, might perceive AI as a threat to their jobs, or not see the same perceived benefits as leaders.
A lack of education or communication on how to use the tools, how it benefits them, and a lack of reassurance of job security all play a role in this difference.
“Employees, however, may fear that demonstrating they can automate significant portions of their job could make them expendable. Even if this fear is unfounded, the perception alone can discourage adoption and honest reporting of time savings.”
An Issue with AI Comms
According to Angela Tangas, CEO at OLIVER and Chief Strategy Officer at the Brandtech Group, says sour sentiment grows among employees often because they don’t feel like they have agency over redesigning their own workflows. In this sense, AI comes from the top-down.
This is partly because AI is often tacked onto workflows instead of helping restructure how people work. Tangas says: “Most employees are constrained by fixed processes, legacy tools, rigid KPIs and team dependencies.”
As a result, staff can’t redesign how work happens around AI, meaning productivity doesn’t scale effectively and often stays at the top.
She continues: “Until organisations move beyond ‘tool adoption’ to true workflow transformation, efficiency gains will stay concentrated at the top – and the workforce will feel like AI is something happening to them, not for them.”
Businesses have rushed to implement AI, but as it’s still in its infancy, most staff are tasked not with only using the tool, but with checking outputs are accurate – meaning to-do lists often get longer (and more mundane).
“Any time saved is immediately swallowed by sense-checking or course-correcting output, or simply more tasks added to their to-do list,” explains Charlotte Bunyan, Head of Innovation at brand experience agency We Are Collider.
“For the C-suite, AI might be an extra eight hours of freedom; for the employee, there’s a real danger that it’s just a faster way to drown in the mundane.”
What’s needed to combat the perceived threat of AI, is transparent communication about wider goals and building a culture of psychological safety – where mistakes and questions are encouraged without consequence.
Bunyan continues: “The uncomfortable truth? The organisations that win in 2026 won’t be the ones with the best prompts, or tools, but those that create the psychological safety for the talent in their organisation to see experimentation with AI as elevating – not eliminating – the value of their role.”
Creating a Psychologically Safe Space
While senior leaders reap significant time savings, most workers feel burdened rather than empowered by AI integration.
The solution lies not in better tools, but in better culture. Organisations must move beyond top-down implementation and toward genuine workflow transformation – one where employees have agency over how AI reshapes their roles. This has the potential to eliminate fears around AI-related redundancies and bridge the attitude gap between executives and the rest of the workforce.
Transparent communication, psychological safety, and inclusive redesign of processes are essential. Ultimately, the businesses that thrive won’t be defined by their AI capabilities, but by how well they bring their entire workforce along for the journey.
